First Family by David Baldacci

Well, that wouldn’t be him. He’d simply look like a long-haul trucker sending multiple packages home.
    He drove back to Alabama, stopping once to get a bite to eat before heading on. When he got to Atlee the only light on was in Gabriel’s room.
    Quarry tapped on the door. “Gabriel?”
    The little boy opened the door. “Yes, Mr. Sam?”
    “What you doing up this late?”
    “Reading.”
    “Reading what?”
    “Reading this.” Gabriel held up a book. Quarry took it and looked at the title. “
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
?”
    “It’s real good. Makes you want to laugh. And cry sometimes too. And it’s got some grown-up language in it, if you know what I mean. But I love it.”
    “But you’re not an Indian.”
    “That’s not all it’s about, Mr. Sam. It’s got stuff for everybody. Lady at the library told me about it. I wanta write a book one day.”
    “Well, Lord knows you got enough words in your head, because they come out faster than I can listen to them sometimes.” Quarry handed the book back. “Your ma turned in?”
    “About an hour ago. We wondered where you got to.”
    “Had some business needed taking care of.” Quarry leaned against the doorjamb, struck a match against the wood, and lighted up a cigarette. “You seen Kurt ’round lately?”
    “No sir.”
    He eyed Gabriel from under his thicket of eyebrows. “Think he might’ve moved on.”
    Gabriel looked surprised. “Now why would he do that? Where’s he got to go to?”
    Quarry tapped his cigarette against the door and ash drifted to the floor. “Everybody’s got somewhere to go. Just takes some folks longer to figure out where to.”
    “I guess you’re right.”
    “Anybody asks, I guess that’s what we tell ’em. Damndest thing, though. He was like family. Now don’t you go off like that without talking to me first, okay?”
    Gabriel looked stunned by the very suggestion. “If I ever leave, Mr. Sam, you’ll be the first to know, right after my ma.”
    “Good boy. Keep on reading, Gabriel. Got to be prepared. The world will give you a chance, but that’s all. The rest comes from you. You blow it you blow it.”
    “You been telling me that long as I can remember.”
    “Good advice worth repeating.”
    Quarry trudged off to his room. It was set on the top floor and had once belonged to his mother and father. Tidiness had never been oneof Quarry’s strong points, though Ruth Ann and Gabriel did their best to keep the growing mounds of stuff at least orderly.
    Quarry’s wife, Cameron, had been dead for over three years. The greatest loss of his life, and he had suffered through several of them. After she’d passed, Quarry had not slept in their bed. He used a long, ragged, hundred-year-old couch set against one wall of his bedroom. He’d kept many of his wife’s things in the bathroom, and Ruth Ann would dutifully dust them even though they would never be used again.
    He could’ve and perhaps should have sold Atlee a long time ago. But that was not an option. Cameron had loved the place and parting with it would mean, for Quarry, finally parting with her. He could not do that, no more than he could kill his own son. Though it frightened him how close he’d come to doing just that. It was the Quarry insanity streak. Day by day, year by year, it kept growing stronger, like the tentacles of a tumor creeping murderously through his brain.
    He settled down on the couch and reached for his bottle of gin. Yet before he took a drink, he changed his mind, rose, slipped on his boots, and grabbed the truck keys off a wobbly-legged table.
    Two minutes later he was back on the road, staring up at a sky punctured with so many stars that night almost seemed turned into day. He rolled down the window, cranked up some tunes, and drank his gin. The heat of a southern night hit him in the face. He hated air conditioning. Atlee had never had it, nor any vehicle he’d ever owned. A man should sweat. Running away